KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Ever since he was six years old, Montreal Johnson has been fascinated with cars. Thursday morning the guy, known as the “friendly mechanic,” was working under a car in a friend’s driveway, when the old Cutlass fell on him.
“I had just started. I was on a hill and all of a sudden 2,500 pounds fell on top of me. I thought I was dead,” the 21-year-old Johnson told Fox 4’s Robert Townsend Thursday afternoon.
“It didn’t roll over me, but it almost did. It caught my shoulder. I’m alright thank God,” says Johnson.
Johnson says he was about to replace the transmission on his friend’s car when the bricks, Montreal put under the tires, broke.
The rolling car narrowly missed the mechanic’s head.
“Again, I thought I was dead though because it was just rolling. The car was rolling back, but it got to a certain point and stopped and that’s was saved me!” adds a smiling Johnson.
“I head my wife yelling that the car fell on him so I came running out,” says a frantic Melvin Griffin, who along with other neighbors, raced to lift the car off his injured buddy.
“It was freaky just to see it. I’ve never seen a car just crush nobody,” says Griffin.
Griffin and others just couldn’t get the car off Johnson until a well-known passer-by helped out.
“Mayor Sly James and this guy were out here in the area and they came to the aid, helped push the car off him and made sure the guy was okay,” Griffin says.
The “friendly mechanic” fractured his right collar bone and suffered cuts on his back and arm during the scary ordeal.
Montreal says after his surgery and he’s all healed, he will continue his lifelong passion: fixing cars.
“I’m blessed. That’s how I see it. I am blessed.”
